Poll of the Week: Which Swimming Rule Should Be Removed? (Results)

Photo Courtesy: Rob Schumacher - USA Today Sports

PHOENIX, Arizona, June 4. EVERY day on The Morning Swim Show I ask my guests a series of five questions to wrap up the interview. One of the questions is: which rule in the swimming rulebook would you like to change or add?

After about six months of asking this question, we figured we’d let the general swimming community let us know which rule they’d like to see removed. Of course, there are plenty of rules out there, more than we can present in a poll, but we presented three options we thought would be fairly popular. The most popular of the three was eliminating the rule limiting underwater kicking on butterfly, backstroke and freestyle to 15 meters. In fact, 63.21 percent picked that as the rule they’d like to remove. In second place was the rule about the backstroke turn needing to be continuous once the swimmer is on his or her stomach, with 33.84 percent voting for that one. And well back in third was the no false start rule with just 2.95 percent picking that one.

Our new poll is based on the recent news that the California legislature is working through a bill that could give Olympians who reside in that state the opportunity to get a tax break on the money they earn from winning Olympic medals. For a multiple medal winner like Missy Franklin, who might declare California her home state when she turns pro next year, that could be a big amount of money. There’s also talk of U.S. congressmen drafting a similar law for Olympians for federal taxes. Do you think Olympians should get these kinds of tax breaks, whether it’s state or federal? Go to swimmingworld.com and vote yes or no in the poll on the right side of our home page.

Author: Jeff Commings

Jeff Commings is the host of several shows on SwimmingWorld.TV, including "The Morning Swim Show," which features interviews with people making headlines in aquatic sports. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in journalism and was a nine-time NCAA All-American.